Emmerdale’s Joshua Richards says Bear plot was ‘unbearable’ amid father’s depression

The Bear Wolf actor opened up about his own father’s depression amid the difficult modern slavery storyline

Emmerdale actor Joshua Richards revealed his sister found Bear Wolf’s storyline “unbearable” as it mirrored their father’s depression.

After Bear confessed to killing Ray Walters who exploited him along with Celia Daniels, coming up on May 4 it’s the day of court. The next day Paddy and the family nervously arrive at court before Bear’s testimony to see whether Bear will make or break the case.

The tension lessens briefly when Bear’s counsellor commences by giving a powerful expert testimony, explaining how Bear was groomed by Ray and feared for his life. With his family watching encouragingly, a nervous Bear Wolf then takes the witness stand to begin his own testimony…

Speaking with the Manchester Evening News and other press about how he’s found the storyline, Joshua said: “Yeah it’s been… it’s the whole spectrum. I’ve been across it. It’s been upsetting as well, because I have actually mentioned this already, but my own father had a kind of depression in his later years. And what was weird is, as I’ve got older, I’ve become to resemble my father more and more.

“My sister, watching it on TV, found it unbearable, because it was like watching our father again, go through the same thing, but because somebody said to me, Well, is it dementia? No, it’s depression, because that’s what we thought of my father. It wasn’t dementia at all, he was just unable to do the things that he used to do, because he was a big, strong man, and he could no longer do the things that kept him happy. So he felt redundant in life, and that was the key for me, because I understood it. I’ve seen it first hand.

“My father was actually hospitalised with it. We did eventually get him out, but he was never the same again because he lost his raison d’être. What do I do? I take a fishing boat out and I catch fish. My father was also coxswain of a lifeboat. He saved lives. Then suddenly he becomes a frail old man, and that’s what’s happened.

“That is happening in Bear’s mind. He’s no longer this reliable, strong person, that he is redundant and in the way. So I could understand how to do that, and then for him to have these absences that we called it with my father, to just disappear. Where are you? You think, is it dementia? No, he’s preoccupied with the fact he’s redundant and he’s useless.

“So that was a great insight from my own personal experience, from my own father, which fuelled and informed me, for everything else across the spectrum, for Bear about what was happening to him. So it was upsetting for me as well, because when you take on a role like that, in, for instance, if you do in a play, you learn the script, you do it the same every night. It’s the same thing you do, you repeat it.

“But with this, you come into work, what do I do next? Where does he go next? It never stops. It’s not static. It’s constantly evolving. So you’ve got to start changing the way you think on a daily basis and it becomes quite gruelling after a while. Always with actors, say well, it’s quite simple, I just do what it says on the…no, you’ve got to invest in it.

“Otherwise you can’t portray it. It doesn’t come over. You’re just acting. You’ve got to do more than act. You’ve got to live it. Otherwise, feel it. Otherwise, it doesn’t read when people watch it. There’s got to be something deeper. I’m not being precious about acting at all. It’s just that it happened to be something I knew. Otherwise, I would have just did what it said on the tin.”

Now that the storyline is coming to its end, Joshua admitted he’s “over the moon”, and on switching off from the role, he added: “It’s quite difficult. It’s quite difficult. You get home and you…because you’ve got to learn the lines for the following day. You’ve got to go back.

“You finish work here, and then you go home. You sit down. You’re still working. And of course, it’s gone on from what you’ve already done today, you’re into another. So yeah, it’s difficult to switch off and sometimes you just think, God. I hope this ends soon, because this is killing me. I’d never thought I’d say that.”

Emmerdale airs on weeknights at 8pm on ITV1 and is available to stream on ITVX.